Salesforce Delivers Wave, the Salesforce Analytics Cloud

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), a leading CRM vendor, has announced Wave, the Salesforce Analytics Cloud. Wave is the first cloud analytics platform designed for every business user, making it easier than ever for anyone to explore data, uncover new insights and take action instantly from any device. Companies can now quickly deploy sales, service and marketing analytics, or build custom mobile analytics apps, using any data source—empowering everyone to make smarter decisions from anywhere. At Dreamforce 2014, more than 30 Wave ecosystem partners, including Accenture, Deloitte Digital and Informatica will showcase how companies can extend analytics for any business need. The world’s most data-driven companies, including Equinix, GE Capital and TriCore Reference Laboratories trust the scale and speed of Wave to know their customers in a whole new way.

Today, Salesforce is disrupting the analytics market, just as we disrupted the CRM industry 15 years ago,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “We’re not only connecting companies with customers in a whole new way with our Customer Success Platform, we’re empowering companies to know their customers like never before with the groundbreaking Wave Analytics Cloud.”

The Data Revolution has Created an Ocean of Potential Insights

The convergence of cloud, social, mobile and connected computing has sparked a data revolution. More than 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated over the last two years . And with a projected 50 billion connected “things” by 2020 , the volume of data available is expected to grow exponentially. This proliferation of data has created a vast ocean of potential insights for companies, allowing them to know their customers in a whole new way. According to a recent report from McKinsey Global Institute, decisions based on data-driven insights result in 23 times greater likelihood of customer acquisition, six times greater likelihood of customer retention and 19 times greater likelihood of profitability.

Unfortunately, data-driven insight is more elusive than ever for today’s business professional. Companies are using outdated, on-premise analytics software that requires an army of experts who must build data warehouses, create schemas and overcome other time consuming technical hurdles just to access data and then securely deliver insights to business users. When business users do get reports, they are not only out-of-date, but are delivered in the form of static presentations and spreadsheets that are difficult to explore and slice and dice. In addition, these reports are challenging to access—let alone drill into—from a mobile device, making them practically worthless when and where they are needed most. To make matters worse, unstructured data from connected products, customer-facing apps and social networks is completely disconnected from the business because legacy analytics software is unable to process it.

Wave Analytics Cloud will make it easy to explore any data source, uncover new insights and take action instantly from any device. Rather than delivering a visualization tool or yet another layer of abstraction that separates business users from the insights they need, Salesforce reimagined the entire analytics process end-to-end for the data revolution—much like it transformed CRM 15 years ago. Wave brings together a dynamic user experience, indexed search and a powerful computing engine into a single, vertically-integrated cloud analytics platform.

Wave is designed for business users, not just analysts. Requests for analytics no longer have to trigger a complicated, lengthy service bureau request. With its schema-free architecture, data no longer has to be pre-sorted or organized in some narrowly defined manner before it can be analyzed. Now, business users can instantly access and easily analyze billions of rows of data themselves, just as they do in popular consumer travel apps that empower them to explore and filter the entire world of commercial flights in seconds. In addition, business analysts can take a more strategic approach to delivering insights by creating mash-ups of relevant third-party data sources in a single dashboard, enabling users to identify data correlations that ignite business actions. Wave also enables social collaboration. As business users derive insights, dashboards can be shared via Salesforce Chatter and new workflows and tasks can be triggered.

At the heart of any modern innovation is the mobile device, and Wave’s revolutionary new user experience is inspired by the most sophisticated advancements in consumer apps and video games, which are optimized for both mobile phones and tablets. Wave delivers data through interactive dashboards, lenses and charts designed to help business users intuitively filter data, customize views and learn as they go. And by indexing every data source and delivering high-speed query processing, Wave Analytics Cloud enables responsive free-form navigation, making it easier than ever for users to query data sets and continue refining their search to arrive at an insight, all from the convenience of their phone. Questions no longer have to be predetermined. With Wave Analytics Cloud, users now have the power of ad hoc exploration to arrive at previously unattainable insights.

Wave Opens Up Insights From Every Data Source—Analytics Apps Can Now Inform Every Business Action

With Wave, analysts, IT and developers can work closely with business leaders to empower everyone to make smarter, data-driven decisions in seconds. Wave is natively integrated with the Salesforce1 Platform and shares the same trusted single sign-on, data security and compliance features of the platform. This enables users to quickly drag and drop data from Salesforce, including data from partner apps built on the platform, to deploy sales, service and marketing analytics apps. In addition, developers and IT can use Wave APIs and other data connectors to easily connect to third-party data sources—from structured SAP and Oracle data to unstructured machine and social data. And because Wave is a platform, developers can also build custom analytics apps for any business function, or embed analytics into a new generation of apps and connected products for customers.

At Dreamforce 2014, more than 30 ecosystem partners will showcase how customers and partners can customize and deploy analytics for any business need with Wave Analytics Cloud:

Integration Leaders: Data integration experts such as Dell Boomi, Informatica, Jitterbit and MuleSoft have joined the ecosystem to enable customers to seamlessly integrate any structured or unstructured data sets, ranging from on-premise SAP and Oracle data to machine and social data.

System Integration Leaders: Deployment experts, including Accenture, Appirio and Deloitte Digital have also joined the ecosystem and offer exceptional industry expertise and best practices for advancing an analytics strategy.

ISV Leaders: A diverse range of independent software vendors and predictive analytics vendors, such as Axeda, Dun & Bradstreet, FinancialForce and Predixion, have also joined the ecosystem to extend Wave Analytics Cloud for any business use case.

Data-Driven Companies Trust the Scale and Speed of Wave to Know Their Customer in a Whole New Way

The world’s most data-driven companies, including Equinix, GE Capital and TriCore Reference Laboratories, trust the scale and speed of Wave to know their customers in a whole new way. Sales reps can combine regional demographic data and historical purchasing patterns to determine which products they should sell to which customers. Customer service agents can resolve issues faster by understanding which stages of a product’s life cycle are generating the most service inquiries. Marketers can refine promotional campaigns based on how customers are reacting to a pop culture trend or a new fashion accessory. And any company can now build custom analytics apps for its customers to analyze patterns, discover new trends and deliver actionable insights.

Pricing and Availability

Wave Analytics Cloud is expected to be generally available October 20, 2014 in English, with additional language support forthcoming.

The Wave mobile app will initially be available on Apple iOS for iPhone and iPad, with additional device support forthcoming.

The Wave Platform license includes all compute, data management, API and security infrastructure. Monthly subscription pricing for the Wave Platform is based on the number of Wave Explorer and Wave Builder licenses.

The Wave Explorer license includes the ability to view, discover, personalize and share data insights and dashboards. Pricing starts at $125 per user per month.

The Wave Builder license includes the ability to create, deploy and manage data sets, data connections and user access. Pricing starts at $250 per user per month.

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